I used to suffer from severe blushing. It seems that there are a lot of people who also suffer from this condition and I thought I would share what worked for me. My cures for blushing aren't difficult, but they will take time.

Step one along the path to conquering your face, is understanding what causes you to blush. For me, it was very tightly connected to my agoraphobia and low self-esteem. I always felt that that people were judging me, so at even the slightest verbal misstep or possible negative look I received, I would light up like the fourth of July.

People who don't suffer from chronic or severe blushing don't know how debilitating it can be. As you become embarrassed your face reddens, which embarrasses you further which in turn causes you to blush even more. If you're like me, eventually you will just completely avoid situations where the CHANCE of becoming embarrassed exists.

The next thing that I had to do was to determine what exactly would set me off. I began carrying a little notebook around with me and I would write down what triggered an attack as it occurred. At first, this made me blush all the more, but I persevered. After a week, I began to see a pattern. I would blush furiously whenever I had to speak in front of people (oddly, I can speak well to a group of strangers, but people who know me, not so much) or when I was being introduced to someone new.

Armed with this knowledge, I decided it was time to change things. I noticed that I would blush particularly bad when I was around a few select friends who I admired. I took some pictures of them that I had and put them on my mirror. I would then practice talking to them about topics that I am not comfortable discussing. At first, the process didn't seem to affect me one way or the other. Then I thought about what they would say if they saw me. That was when I began blushing. But as I kept talking to my friends' effigies I found that I was blushing less. I was then able to carry this over to real conversations, it wasn't perfect at first but I was making improvements.

I mentioned that I am agoraphobic, but that may not be true anymore. I would still stay at home, but I have managed to make leaving the house bearable. As part of my cure for blushing, I forced myself to go outside for random walks. I would sit at coffee shops for a few hours; walk around with no specific destination. As I did this more and more, I began to realize that no one was talking about me. They didn't care. That was important for me - I needed to get over myself and realize that people are much more interested in their own lives than there are in me or mine.

The last step to my "recovery" was forcing myself to become more social. At company events, or social gatherings, I began talking to people. Small talk will never be my forte, but I did discover that it's really not all that hard to talk to people. Learning how to initiate contact with people was a huge step for me.